thickest, prettiest flowery bowers; and turtles splashing into
the water ahead of us; and fish (silver-sided perch), looking like
reflections themselves, floating through the flower reflections,
nibbling their breakfast.

Our bayou had been running through swamp only a little more solid than
itself; in fact, there was no solidity but what came from the roots of
grasses. Now, the banks began to get firmer, from real soil in them.
We could see cattle in the distance, up to their necks in the lilies,
their heads and sharp-pointed horns coming up and going down in the
blue and white. Nothing makes cattle's heads appear handsomer, with
the sun just rising far, far away on the other side of them.
The sea-marsh cattle turned loose to pasture in the lush spring
beauty--turned loose in Elysium!

But the land was only partly land yet, and the cattle still cattle to
us. The rising sun made revelations, as our bayou carried us through a
drove in their Elysium, or it might have always been an Elysium to
us. It was not all pasturage, all enjoyment. The rising and falling
feeding head was entirely different, as we could now see, from the
rising and falling agonized head of the bogged--the buried alive.
It is well that the lilies grow taller and thicker over the more
treacherous places; but, misery! misery! not much of the process was
concealed from us, for the cattle have to come to the bayou for
water. Such a splendid black head that had just yielded breath! The
wide-spreading ebony horns thrown back among the morning-glories, the
mouth open from the last sigh, the glassy eyes staring straight at the
beautiful blue sky above, where a ghostly moon still lingered, the
velvet neck ridged with veins and muscles, the body already buried in
black ooze. And such a pretty red-and-white-spotted heifer, lying on
her side, opening and shutting her eyes, breathing softly in meek
resignation to her horrible calamity! And, again, another one was
plunging and battling in the act of realizing her doom: a fierce,
furious, red cow, glaring and bellowing at the soft, yielding
inexorable abysm under her, the bustards settling afar off, and her
own species browsing securely just out of reach.

They understand that much, the sea-marsh cattle, to keep out of reach
of the dead combatant. In the delirium of anguish, relief cannot be
distinguished from attack, and rescue of the victim has been proved to
mean goring of the rescuer.

The bayou turned from